A tale of two births

I have attended two births this week and I don't think I could have gone to two births that differed so radically from each other. In fact, they were so different, it is almost hard to beleive that the two events were a demonstration of the same biological process.

A few days ago I attended a beautiful homebirth that happened very quickly. Baby was born into his fathers arms after only a few hours of labor. Mom labored in a birth tub under dim lightening. She drank a rasberry smoothie and was offered other snacks. Don't get me wrong, it was a beautiful birth, but mom wasn't just sitting there having a day at the local spa. She contracted hard and moaned and all the other things laboring moms tend to do as baby is coming down. The midwife there listened to the baby's heart beat a few times, did some perenium support and made some"you go girl" comments, but otherwise her main duty during this birth was to hold the flashlight so the dad could catch the baby underwater. (And please know I am not minimizing a homebirth midwife's role at a birth. The midwife is the guard that watches for issues and knows both how to prevent and take care of them should they arise so that the role of flashlight bearer is even a possibility.)

Yesterday I attended another birth. After 24 hours of hard labor, mom delivered her baby into the arms of a surgeon she had never met before under the harsh lights of a surgical suite. In the prior 24 hours she had 9 different wires going into or out of her. She was stuck10 times with needles, denied food and even water despite having lips that were cracking from dryness. Various strangers walked into the room without knocking. She was touched and examined by countless and mostly nameless staff. She was made to lay completely still on her back even though she asked to sit up and to walk so that baby could use gravity to help bring him down. Eventually she was told her food and gravity deprived body was not capable of birthing the baby, and that the baby was in trouble. Then she was left alone (well with just me anyway) for over two hours waiting to have the baby that was in such immediate distress "saved" by surgery.

I admit I do like homebirths and I think the statistics are clear that homebirth is far safer for most women and their babies, but I am not saying one was good b/c it was at home or that one was bad because it was at the hospital. I have been to rather unpleasant homebirths as well. I am also not saying that all the interventions in the second birth were unnecessary, because I simply don't know. I tend to think most were and the ones that weren't necessary probably created the need for the other ones but regardless, the outcome could have been the same. Actually. I don't know if I am really saying anything at all, except that I have gotten 3 hours of sleep in the last 50 plus hours and feeling down after a lousy birth.

The fact of the matter is that the second birth discribes how most births occur in this country. Maybe not with the major abdominal surgery at the end (though with a 30-50% c-section rate at most area hospitals, that is the way it will be soon enough), but with the wires and nameless strangers in and out while mom is confined to the bed. I can't help but believe though if you put the right ingredients together, you can tip the odds in favor of things being different....better. I thnk the right ingredients start with empathy, willingness to respect mom as an individual and most of all a basic trust that God's design is a good one that man shouldn't mess with until a good reason comes along.